Aftermath: The Torture Apologist tour and other Un-pleasantries

Posted: May 3, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, Civil Liberties, Democratic Politics, Diplomacy Nightmares, Domestic Policy, Elections | Tags: , | 55 Comments

I talked to Bostonboomer last night about the time John King–sober this time–was on the air. Piers Morgan is a cup of tea that I don’t want to know exists, but I did go back to look for a pattern during the Anderson Cooper show.  I even checked out Fox News a bit.  There it was.  The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld torture policy apologist tour.  It was inevitable that a few Bushies would show up to offer the ‘balance’ to the Osama story. I’m not sure if Dubya wants to be able to visit the South of France without fear of being arrested for crimes against humanity or it’s just a bunch of guilty consciences trying to find equilibrium, I just see the meme and it’s appalling.

The Bushies have jumped on the Bin Laden courier narrative as a way to justify their treatment of Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed and other detainees from the War on Terror. I must’ve not been the only one that saw this unfolding because today’s RealClearPolitics has a pretty good set of videos up with both the meme mongers–like NY’s Congressional Ninny Peter King— and the ones that say this isn’t so.  I’d say John Brennan’s word on the matter is a pretty authoritative one.  SOS Clinton speaks on this too. Brennan was on Morning Joe this morning try to  kill the meme among other things.

Here’s a taste from TPM on what I sensed during last night’s news cycle.

Like so many memes that persist in politics, this one started on the Internet. The morning after President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan, conservatives started crowing that credit should be given to President George W. Bush — specifically, for having the foresight and courage to torture the people who provided the initial scraps of intel that ultimately led the CIA to a giant compound just north of Islamabad.

The most prominent of these conservatives was Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who took to Twitter to ask sardonically, “Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now?

About two hours later, the Associated Press published a brief story claiming that the CIA obtained the initial intelligence it needed to find bin Laden from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the so-called mastermind of 9/11 — and his successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi at CIA black sites in Poland and Romania.

Those secret prisons, which the Obama administration contends to have abandoned, were the facilities where Mohammed and al-Libi were waterboarded. There, the detainees supposedly identified by nom de guerre a courier who would years later be located by American intelligence officials, and lead them to bin Laden’s compound.

“The news is sure to reignite debate over whether the now-closed interrogation and detention program was successful,” the AP wrote. “Former president George W. Bush authorized the CIA to use the harshest interrogation tactics in U.S. history. President Barack Obama closed the prison system.”

There’s just one problem. The key bit of intel wasn’t acquired via torture, according to a more fleshed out version of the same report.

The morning after the day after the ghoulish Booyah Death celebrations just reminds me that there are parts of being an American that really dismay me because there are things about American Society that are just over the top.  It’s our inability to separate our modern reality from spaghetti westerns and other Hollywood genres.  This entire thing is unfolding like a series of badly written, thinly plotted Hollywood movies.  Don’t even get me started on the actors.

I’d like to think that we could take this time to reflect on the last ten years of blowback rather than join a mosh pit of grave dancers.  We now have trillions of dollars sunk in two seemingly endless wars.  Many Americans and others have died as a result.  This adds to the already too high death toll of the Cole and the World Trade Centers.  We got a second Bush term because of all this.   We have made flying commercial airlines a complete exercise in fascist humiliation right down to bullies in uniform doing unspeakable things to the elderly and young.  Bin Laden’s death gives us reason to recheck our reactions and values, not create a set of worse ones.

First, before we go any further down Conspiracy Lane, the President will release the graphic photos of the dead Osama Bin Laden.   I suppose that my hope is that we don’t see this abused to the point that it puts people serving in countries with religionists that are offended by this sort of thing in danger.  This will probably set off a series of extremist sites debunking the photo but if this puts some people’s minds at rest, so be it. Maybe Donald Trump will get another poll boost by calling for more evidence than is rationally necessary.  Part of the problem with the photos release seems to be that Bin Laden’s skull was blown apart which makes this a particularly gruesome set of photos. They’re not sure what reaction folks will have to it.

I suppose it’s got to be released eventually, but count me lucky that I’m going to be sitting in my house for awhile and not traveling about or serving anywhere dangerous.  This is not me being an Obama apologist either, this is me being a realist.  Pope Dark Ages just canonized a barely dead pope who supposedly did miracles.  We’ve seen martyr’s funerals turn into all kinds of unpleasant things recently. We can’t even get a bunch of nuts from Kansas to stop harassing people at funerals and one nut in particular to quit grandstanding by burning Qurans.  Rational behavior is not exactly a hallmark of religion. We’ve seen the nuttiness from humanity BC forward.  It’s not going to stop, unfortunately.

A second question will come from the Wag-the-Dog plot.  Will the poll bounce that Obama has gotten from this be enough to get people’s minds away from the myriad of problems that are not solved?   Again, I think that depends on the size of those lesser,  shallow spaghetti western angels that comprise our society.   Torture, wars, Gitmo, and the TSA can only bring on so much false sense of security.  I think we’ve learned some of that over the past decade.  Hopefully, I’m not just being optimistic.  Most of us know that  Osama Bin Laden’s death will not get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq any quicker.  It will not solve our unemployment problem and it’s not going to stop the finance sector from draining every penny it can out of businesses and households.  It certainly is not going to solve our problem with Pakistan or hopefully, define our policy on the nations undergoing the Arab Spring.

You can gleefully dance on a watery grave for only so long before you have to go back to chopping wood, carrying water, and cooking dinner.  Eventually, you have to come back from the adrenaline rush and face the problems that are not dead.   Osama Bin Laden has been one very small problem recently. It’s nice he’s out of the way, still …

The Corps of Engineers is blowing up a levee on the Mississippi River as we speak. It will flood parts of Missouri.   You remember those guys, they are the ones that brought us the Katrina aftermath.  Canada just had an election with some astounding results.  The UK is considering completely changing the way they vote and achieve majorities.  They’re not getting a consensus on governance any more than we’ve been able to find bi-partisanship.  What does this mean for democracy?   Their parliamentary system is at the root of as many governments as our republic. Governments are being overthrown in a part of the world where we get most of our oil.  When will that impact Saudi Arabia?  Is Japan’s nuclear reactor any closer to safe?   Are you eating Gulf seafood yet?  Does it bother you that two ecosystems have been utterly destroyed by the energy industry with a year?  What have we learned about these things over the last two days?

Unfortunately, the public forum to work out all these issues is going to be our very corporate, very broken media and the nether reaches of the internet where hopefully some less-captured voices prevail.  I think we all have the duty to get beyond the hooplah and search out the facts because these things have a tendency to shape policy as well as conversations.  I’m concerned that our two second attention span–which fixates on personalities and symbolic events–will take our eyes away from the real deal.  Does it matter if Bin Laden is dead or alive?  What problem does that really solve?

Monday Reads

Posted: April 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Diplomacy Nightmares, Foreign Affairs, Hamas, Labor unions, Libya, MENA, Middle East, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, Syria, worker rights | Tags: , , , | 68 Comments

Good Morning!

This is the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination.  It happened on April 4, 1968.  Historian Robert Creamer remembers the day and its meaning in a post at HuffPo.  It’s the 43rd anniversary of the activist’s death.  He was in Memphis working for the rights of ordinary workers to organize and better their work terms and conditions.

Martin Luther King was in Memphis to support the strike of the city’s garbage collectors who were demanding the right of collective bargaining.

He was there because the right to sit across a table and negotiate wages and working conditions gave otherwise powerless workers, the right to have a say.

Then — as now — collective bargaining was, as the AFSCME banner said in the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda, about freedom.

At Duke that spring we — and the non-academic employees of the university — took up the same cause. Collective bargaining was the only thing that could systematically, permanently change the relations of power and overcome years of exploitation.

Even in 1968, their $1.15 per hour was a pathetic salary — $2,392 a year. They were exploited every day. They needed a union.

Now, 43 years later, America is relearning the lessons of April, 1968:

  • How collective bargaining is an integral part of a truly democratic society.
  • How the labor movement is about a lot more than wages and working conditions — that it’s about respect and dignity and hope.
  • And finally, it is learning once again that you can’t have the rain without the thunder and lightning. Freedom is earned through struggle. And if you want to have a great life — a life that gives you a sense of fulfillment and meaning — it’s never too late to decide that you will dedicate yours to the struggle for social and economic justice.

The LA Times reports that over 700 Anti-union pieces of legislation have been introduced across the country as part of the Republican party’s war on working Americans.  Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

More than 700 bills have been introduced in virtually every state. Nearly half of the states are considering legislation to limit public employees’ collective bargaining rights. Unions are girding for a fight.

Now that the governors of Ohio and Wisconsin have signed bills to limit public workers’ collective bargaining rights, their fellow Republicans in other states are expected to gain momentum in their efforts to take on unions.

Palm Beach, Florida judges have evidently had it with the sloppy recordkeeping practices of mortgage holders and servicers.  They’re starting to “routinely”  dismiss foreclosure cases.

Angry and exasperated by faulty foreclosure documents, judges throughout Florida are hitting back by increasingly dismissing cases and boldly accusing lawyers of “fraud upon the court.”

A Palm Beach Post review of cases in state and appellate courts found judges are routinely dismissing cases for questionable paperwork. Although in most cases the bank is allowed to refile the case with the appropriate documents, in a growing number of cases judges are awarding homeowners their homes free and clear after finding fraud upon the court.

Still, critics say judges are not doing enough.

“The judges are the gatekeepers to jurisprudence, to the Florida Constitution, to access to the courts and to due process,” said attorney Chip Parker, a Jacksonville foreclosure defense attorney who was recently investigated by the Florida Bar for his critical comments about so-called “rocket dockets” during an interview with CNN. “It’s discouraging when it appears as if there is an exception being made for foreclosure cases.”

Dictator Bashar al-Assad of Syria is undoubtedly one of the most oppressive leaders in the world. He has been a strong supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah.  AJ has an op-ed that talks about how deluded he’s become these days as his people have finally stood up to say enough!  It’s an interesting piece that talks about how just being against Israel does not translate into a blank check from your people or other leaders in the region.

The eruption of Arab revolutions has been a reaction to decades of repression and the skewed distribution of wealth; two problems that have plagued anti- and pro-Western Arab governments alike.

And Syria is one of the most repressive states in the region; hundreds, if not thousands, of people have disappeared into its infamous prisons. Some reappear after years, some after decades, many never resurface at all.

Syrians have not been the only victims. Other Arabs – Lebanese who were abducted during the decades of Syrian control over its neighbour, Jordanian members of the ruling Baath party who disagreed with its leadership and members of different Palestinian factions – have also been victimised.

Syrian critics of the regime are often arrested and charged – without due process – with serving external – often American and Israeli – agendas to undermine the country’s “steadfastness and confrontational policies”.

But these acts have never been adequately condemned by Arab political parties and civil society, which have supported Syria’s position on Israel while turning a blind eye to its repressive policies.

Thus while Syrian dissidents, including prominent nationalist and leftist intellectuals, are incarcerated in Syrian jails, other Arab activists and intellectuals have flocked to Damascus to praise its role in “defending Arab causes”.

This hypocrisy has reinforced the regime’s belief that it is immune from the criticisms directed at repressive pro-Western governments in the region.

As some one who studies the region–albeit mostly in economic and trade terms–I’ve found that each country has its unique set of problems and circumstances even though many of them seem to have similarities on the surface.  Syria’s been one of the worst of the worst destabilizers in the region. This is one regime that could be replaced by nearly any one and it would be an immediate improvement.

Former President Clinton is on record saying that the US government shouldn’t rule out arming Libyan Rebels.

But Clinton said he wouldn’t completely rule out the idea of supplying arms to Libya’s rebels.

“Let me just say this. I sure wouldn’t shut the door to it. I think … we may need to know a little more,” he said.

Clinton, husband of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, stressed that he was speaking without “any official sanction” whatsoever.

“I’m just speaking from myself. But I certainly wouldn’t take that off the table, too,” he said.

For some reason, emissaries from Gadhafi are meeting Greek leaders to find a political solution to their civil war and to the UN resolution.  Maybe Gadhafi is looking for that special retirement place on a Greek Isle.

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s acting foreign minister met with Greece’s prime minister yesterday to seek a political solution to hostilities in the north African country, said Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas.

“It appears that the regime is also seeking a solution,” Droutsas said, referring to Qaddafi’s government, after Abdul Ati al-Obeidi met with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, Droutsas said in a statement.

The talks followed “a series of contacts over recent days” involving Greek and Libyan officials, including the countries’ prime ministers, which led to al-Obeidi’s Athens trip, Droutsas said. Al-Obeidi also planned to visit Malta and Turkey, he said.

“It is necessary for there to be a serious attempt for peace, for stability in the region,” the Greek foreign minister said.

The Daily Mail reports that Moussa Koussa is getting asylum in the UK.  I’d say that’s a pretty interesting development considering his role in the Lockabie bombing.  I suppose there’s worse places to spend your retirement from “notorious henchmen”.

Libya’s feared ‘torturer-in-chief’ has been offered asylum in the UK in return for his help to topple Muammar Gaddafi and his hated regime.

The secret offer to Libya’s former foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, was made while he was still in Tripoli and helped persuade him to seek sanctuary in Britain.

But any promise of special protection for one of Gaddafi’s most notorious henchmen has provoked anger from those who want Koussa, 62, put on trial for his alleged crimes.

MP Ben Wallace, parliamentary aide to Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, said: ‘This man should not be granted asylum or any other special treatment; the only proper outcome is to bring him to justice.

‘Britain needs to make up its mind quickly. There will be no shortage of courts that will readily seek his extradition. The last thing the UK wants is for Koussa to languish, at taxpayers’ expense, in legal no-man’s-land.’

MI6 officers first made contact with Koussa, who has been linked with the Lockerbie bombing and the killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in London, in the first few days after the UN-sanctioned attacks on Gaddafi’s military machine on March 19.

A source told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Central to the enticements was the prospect of living in safety in the UK under the protection of the asylum laws. Koussa’s greatest concern was what would happen to him once he left Gaddafi.

I’m going to end with something BB sent me last on what the radical right thinks of women.  You can see this onslaught of anti women laws ooze disrespect and the opinion that women aren’t fully competent adults who are capable of making good, moral decisions without some big daddy republican government telling them what to do.  Disgusting!  They want to turn BP loose on the Gulf of Mexico again, but women can’t even been trusted with their own bodies.

Women sure are impulsive, lying, vulnerable and childlike creatures, aren’t they? That’s the conclusion I’d draw, if my understanding of women were based solely on anti-abortion bills.

These bills are pending and passing at a disturbing pace in multiple states. They don’t just reflect the nation’s chronic and understandable ambivalence about abortion. They also paint a shockingly negative portrait of women.

Here are a few key messages gleaned from the latest bills and anti-abortion advocacy:

* Women are impulsive. Half of states now require women to undergo a waiting period before obtaining an abortion. Usually the waiting period is one day. South Dakota just passed a three-day waiting period, the longest in the nation. The implication is that, without a government-mandated waiting period, women would dash into abortion clinics without first weighing the gravity of their decision.

* Women are prone to lying. Last week, the Indiana House passed a measure that would forbid most abortions after 20 weeks. A version of it is expected to pass into law. Opponents tried to carve out an exception for victims of rape or incest, as well as for women whose lives are threatened by medical complications. However, the bill’s sponsor fended off the amendment by attacking it as a “giant loophole” that women would use to get abortions by pretending they were raped.

* Women need things explained to them. A bill recently passed by the Texas House would require doctors to describe the fetus in some detail to all abortion-seeking patients, including victims of rape and incest. The bill allows women to close their eyes and cover their ears. (It doesn’t specify whether women are permitted to say, “La-la-la, I can’t hear you.”)

Well, that’s about it from me.  I’m just waiting for the severe weather to fire up today and trying to heal.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Thursday Reads

Posted: March 31, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, Democratic Politics, Diplomacy Nightmares, executive orders, Foreign Affairs, Iraq, Libya, MENA, morning reads, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 40 Comments

Good Morning!! Here are the stories that caught my eye this morning.

Reuters: Exclusive: Obama authorizes secret help for Libya rebels

President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Obama signed the order, known as a presidential “finding”, within the last two or three weeks, according to government sources familiar with the matter.

Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. This is a necessary legal step before such action can take place but does not mean that it will.

Washington Post: In Libya, CIA is gathering intelligence on rebels

The Obama administration has sent teams of CIA operatives into Libya in a rush to gather intelligence on the identities and capabilities of rebel forces opposed to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, according to U.S. officials.

The information has become more crucial as the administration and its coalition partners move closer to providing direct military aid or guidance to the disorganized and beleaguered rebel army.

Although the administration has pledged that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed to Libya, officials said Wednesday that President Obama has issued a secret finding that would authorize the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and other support to Libyan opposition groups.

I can’t imagine why anyone would be surprised that the CIA is involved in Libya (they are everywhere). But the progs are looking down their noses in strong disapproval.

Emptywheel: Where Will Obama Try Himself for Material Support for Terrorism?

After all, according to Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project any help to a terrorist group–even counseling on how to make peace–is material support. And no matter how we try to spin arming rebels as an act of peace, it’s a good deal more help than legal counsel.

And, as the DC Circuit’s decision yesterday in Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman’s habeas suit makes clear, it’s not enough for a person to stop associating with al Qaeda in the 1990s, nor does the government need any real evidence of a tie between someone in al Qaeda’s vicinity to claim that person is a member of al Qaeda.

Glenn Greenwald: The wisdom and legality of arming Libyan rebels

Then there’s the question of the legality of arming Libyan troops. Salon’s Justin Elliott reported on Monday that the administration was actively considering arming the rebels despite an absolute arms embargo imposed by U.N. Resolution 1970 (“imposing an arms embargo on the country”). Today, The Guardian elaborates by citing numerous legal experts insisting that it would be a violation of the U.N. Resolution for the U.S. to arm the rebels. For its part, the U.S. insists that it is legally entitled to do so, with Hillary Clinton announcing that the arms embargo has been “overriden” by the broad mandate of U.N. Resolution 1973, allowing “all necessary measures” to be used to protect Libyan civilians.

On the strictly legal issue, this seems to be a close question. Can the specific arms embargo really be “overriden” by a general clause allowing the protection of civilians? That seems redolent of the Bush arguments that specific prohibitions in the law (such as the ban on warrantless eavesdropping) were “overriden” by the broad war powers assigned by the AUMF. More to the point, can it really be said that arming Libyan rebels is necessary for the protection of civilians? That sounds much more like what one does to help one side win a civil war.

I don’t know, and I admit I don’t like the idea of this action in Libya expanding too far. I remember when Reagan armed the “Contras.” Of course back in those days we were arming right-wing groups and the US was involved in countless human rights violations. In Libya, the opposition forces are trying to depose a genuinely evil dictator who has been involved in terrorist attacks.

But here’s my question: why don’t the progs convince the guy they supported to get us the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan? They wanted this guy, they forced him on us, and now they’re whining. and what are they doing to find a decent alternative? A big nothing.

I’m not going to be happy if we get involved in a ground war in Libya or anywhere else, but it hasn’t happened yet. We’ve been in Afghanistan for almost ten years!

Raw Story: Most Americans think Obama does not deserve re-election, according to new poll

Obama’s approval rating is also at its lowest point ever, at 42 percent, while his disapproval rating rose from earlier in the month to a new high of 48 percent.

A similar Quinnipiac poll published March 3 found President Obama with 46 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval.

In that earlier poll, voters also split on whether Obama deserves reelection, with 47 percent saying yes and 45 percent saying no.

The latest poll reflects the president’s sliding fortunes in other studies, with a full 50 percent now saying that he does not deserve to stay in office beyond 2012.

The big problem with this is that the Republicans are bound to nominate someone who is to the right of Atilla the Hun and about as crazy and unempathetic as Muammar Gaddafi. I refuse to vote for Obama, but what if we end up with Michelle Bachmann or Mike Huckabee as President?

Anyway, the Tea Party’s polls are in the crapper along with Obama’s.

Just 32 percent of respondents viewed the tea party favorably, while a record-high 47 percent had a negative view of the movement that propelled Republicans to dramatic Congressional victories last November. Fourteen percent had no opinion, and 7 percent said they’ve never heard of the tea party.

I sure hope the Congresspeople find out about that.

Russ Feingold doesn’t think Jeffrey Immelt is a very good jobs czar. No kidding, lol.

Feingold’s new group, Progressives United, is set to launch a new campaign to pressure General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to step down as the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competiveness. Feingold’s campaign — which I’m told will be joined by Move On later today — is based on two pieces of news that, Feingold says, render Immelt unfit for the gig of Obama jobs chief: GE paid no American taxes in 2010; and Immelt’s compensation doubled .

In an email to members of his new group, Feingold will argue that if Immelt doesn’t step down, Obama should fire him, arguing that Dems need to stop coddling corporations whose behavior undermines our economy:

I’ve got a couple of semi-humorous stories to get your mind off all the bad news. Get out your tiny violin. Did you know that the super-rich are unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives?

The Atlantic: Secret Fears of the Super-Rich

Does great wealth bring fulfillment? An ambitious study by Boston College suggests not. For the first time, researchers prompted the very rich—people with fortunes in excess of $25 million—to speak candidly about their lives. The result is a surprising litany of anxieties: their sense of isolation, their worries about work and love, and most of all, their fears for their children.

Awwwww. Too bad, so sad. Then give your money away to people who actually need it, why don’t you. And then get a real job.

Raw Story: Death anxiety linked to acceptance of intelligent design: study

Research conducted at the University of British Columbia and Union College found that people’s death anxiety was associated with support of intelligent design and rejection of evolutionary theory.

Death anxiety also influenced those in the study to report an increased liking for Michael Behe, a prominent proponent of intelligent design, and an increased disliking for Richard Dawkins, a well-known evolutionary biologist.

The findings suggest that people are motivated to believe in intelligent design and doubt evolutionary theory because of unconscious psychological motives.

Okay, time out. Because? No. This is a correlational study, and as we all should have learned long ago, Correlation does not equal causation.

The study was lead by UBC Psychology Assistant Professor Jessica Tracy and and UBC psychology PhD student Jason Martens. It was published in the March 30 issue of the open access journal PLoS ONE.

“Our results suggest that when confronted with existential concerns, people respond by searching for a sense of meaning and purpose in life,” Tracy said. “For many, it appears that evolutionary theory doesn’t offer enough of a compelling answer to deal with these big questions.”

There are a lot of variables unaccounted for in this description of the study. Maybe death anxiety is just associated with fundamentalist Christianity. I guess I could look up the study and see what the findings really were… But I probably won’t.

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Hillary says No

Posted: March 16, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, Diplomacy Nightmares, Domestic Policy, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Hillary Clinton, Tunisia | Tags: , , , | 25 Comments

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has released an interview with SOS Hillary Clinton. Blitzer asked if she was going to either serve a second term or run for President in 2012.  This is pretty clear evidence the Clinton is planning on returning to private life shortly. Blitzer interviewed Clinton during her visit to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on March 16, 2011.

Q- If the president is reelected, do you want to serve a second term as secretary of state?

No

Q- Would you like to serve as secretary of defense?

No

Q- Would you like to be vice president of the United States?

No

Q- Would you like to be president of the United States?

No

Q- Why not?

Because I have the best job I could ever have. This is a moment in history where it is almost hard to catch your breath. There are both the tragedies and disasters that we have seen from Haiti to Japan and there are the extraordinary opportunities and challenges that we see right here in Egypt and in the rest of the region. So I want to be part of helping to represent the United States at this critical moment in time, to do everything I can in support of the president and our government and the people of our country to stand for our values and our ideals, to stand up for our security, which has to remain first and foremost in my mind and to advance America’s interests. And there isn’t anything that I can imagine doing after this that would be as demanding, as challenging or rewarding.

Q- President of the United States?

You know, I had a wonderful experience running and I am very proud of the support I had and very grateful for the opportunity, but I’m going to be, you know, moving on.

Q- I asked my viewers and followers on Twitter to send questions and a lot of them said, “Ask her if she’ll run in 2016 for the presidency.” A lot of folks would like to you to do that.

Well that’s very kind, but I am doing what I want to do right now and I have no intention or any idea even of running again. I’m going to do the best I can at this job for the next two years.

Clinton also spoke of democratic reforms in Egypt while visiting that nation and Tunisia. She was greeted with protests in Tunisia.

Clinton toured Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the pro-democracy uprising that led to last month’s resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Clinton said visiting the square was a “great reminder of the power of the human spirit and desire for freedom and human rights and democracy.”

She was welcomed by Egyptian citizens and shook hands with passersby in the square before meeting with Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.

Before leaving for Tunisia on Wednesday, Clinton was set to meet with Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa. Moussa, 74, is a veteran Egyptian diplomat and has announced his candidacy for the country’s presidency.

Clinton also met with pro-democracy activists and members of Egypt’s civil society. She is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Egypt since the anti-government protests.

Clinton arrived in Cairo Tuesday after attending a Group of Eight foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris.

After wrapping up talks in Egypt, she travels to Tunisia – the starting point of the pro-democracy movement that has swept through much of the Middle East and North Africa this year.

Dozens of Tunisians took to the streets in Tunis on Wednesday to protest against Clinton’s visit.  The demonstrators said they oppose foreign intervention in their country.

There appears to be no break through in her meetings with the G8 in terms of backing a no-fly zone for Libya.  While she met with Egypt’s Prime Minister, some details of their meeting have not been released.

On Tuesday, Clinton issued a strong statement of praise for Egypt’s political revolution, declaring she was “deeply inspired” by the dramatic change and promising new assistance for America’s longtime Middle East ally.

Clinton pledged $90 million in emergency economic assistance during a meeting in Cairo with Foreign Minister Nabil Al-Araby. She is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Egypt since the overthrow of Mubarak.

“The United States will work to ensure that the economic gains Egypt has forged in recent years continue, and that all parts of Egyptian society benefit from these gains,” a State Department statement noted.

She’s not yet discussed her plans after she retires from the position of US Secretary of State.

Monday Reads

Posted: February 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: academia, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Diplomacy Nightmares, education, Foreign Affairs, Global Financial Crisis, Human Rights, Libya, U.S. Politics, unemployment, voodoo economics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , | 15 Comments

Good Morning!

Okay, so I’m going to show you two nifty pie charts first at The Business Insider.   They basically show how the federal balance is extremely unbalanced because expenses are growing and revenues are not growing at all.  Henry Blodgett correctly points out that there’s quite a bit of growth in ‘entitlements’.  Let me just point out that all this makes complete sense to me  What do you get in an economy that has normalized around a 10 percent unemployment rate or higher if you count the things like disenfranchised workers and the underemployed and couple that with year after year after year after year of excessive tax cuts on the uberrich who happen to be the only ones making money?  Well, you get more and more people that are reliant on unemployment and other government ‘entitlements’ and you get a huge revenue gap.  This is about the most careless set of policy choices made that I’ve seen since I first read up on the Hoover administration and the start of the Great Depression.

The “expense” pie is growing like gangbusters, driven by the explosive growth of the entitlement programs that no one in government even has the balls to talk about. “Revenue” is barely growing at all.

As we’ll illustrate with more of Mary’s charts next week, the US cannot grow its way out of this problem. It needs to cut spending, specifically entitlement spending. We hereby announce that we’ll give a special gold star to the first “leader” with the guts to say that publicly.

I’ll give a box of gold stars to any one that points out to this blowhard that the way to remove the growing entitlements is to put people back to work.  Also, giving tax money to rich people so they can invest in the BRIC economies and buy land where their money is parked in the Bahamas or Grand Caymans is a really, really stupid proposition.  We’ve needed a real jobs program for some times.  People with jobs pay taxes, buy things that are taxed, and don’t require entitlements.  How absolutely stupid do you have to be to not get that?  I don’t even need all those economics and finance degrees to figure that one out.

In the Friday Reads I mentioned that Fox News’ Roger Ailes was caught on tape encouraging colleagues to lie to Federal Investigators.  Well, it seems that lying has finally caught up with one Republican operative.  Maybe people will wake up to the Faux News’ and their dirty tricks now.  Here’s what Barry Ritholtz had to say about his scoop on the indictment.

Here’s what I learned recently: Someone I spoke with claimed that Ailes was scheduled to speak at their event in March, but canceled. It appears that Roger’s people, ostensibly using a clause in his contract, said he “cannot appear for legal reasons.”

I asked “What, precisely, does that mean?”

The response: “Roger Ailes will be indicted — probably this week, maybe even Monday.”

Well, it’s Monday. Does Rupert Murdoch know where Roger Ailes is?   Some times watching Karma unfold is a delightful thing.

I’m not sure if you’re a big enough masochist to spend time with the Sunday news shows anymore, but I do try to catch Christiane Amanpour and she delivered an interesting program yesterday.  She had an exclusive interview with one of Gadhaffi’s sons.  It was extremely interesting and I would recommend you go watch that segment. Amanpour actually traveled to Tripoli this weekend.  We will now refer to the son as Tripoli Saif al-Islam Gadhafi since he seems about as in touch with reality as Baghdad Bob did back in the day.

There was a “big, big gap between reality and the media reports,” Gadhafi told Amanpour. “The whole south is calm. The west is calm. The middle is calm. Even part of the east.”

In response to President Barack Obama’s call for Moammar Gadhafi to step down and the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous vote to impose an arms embargo on Libya and urge nations to freeze Libyan assets, Gadhafi’s son was defiant.

“Listen, nobody is leaving this country. We live here, we die here,” he insisted. “This is our country. The Libyans are our people. And for myself, I believe I am doing the right thing.”

“The President of the U.S. has called on your father to step down. How do you feel about that?” Amanpour asked.

“It’s not an American business, that’s number one,” said Gadhafi, who was dressed casually as he spoke with Amanpour. “Second, do they think this is a solution? Of course not.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting kind of tired of watching these jerks that we supported for some time prove exactly what is meant by the label “brutal dictator”.  Could we just once fund and support some one like His Holiness the Dali Lama for a change?  It’s no wonder we still get called ugly Americans.

Speaking of Ugly Americans responsible for diplomatic nightmares, Paul Wolfowitz showed up on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN on Sunday. Could some one please tell the media we don’t need to hear from the people that screwed up Middle East Policy any more?  Why do I keep seeing this man’s face despite his obvious failures with Iraq policy and peccadilloes made public during his time at the World Bank?  I did want to point you to Zakaria’s interview with Michael Lewis on global  financial crisis. The video is here. He has some interesting thing to say about banks in Greece, Ireland, and here.  Listen for this part:

LEWIS: …And the –the anger – the anger about the Wall Street bailouts, I think, is the beginning of the Tea Party.  I mean the – the injustice of people being rewarded for failure and – and supported by the public purse, that was the source of the original outrage.

ZAKARIA: But it went in a libertarian direction…

LEWIS: It did…It – but – but a qualified libertarian direction, because a true libertarian would be outraged that these Wall Street banks are still being subsidized by the government.  And there doesn’t seem to be any move on the right to – to remove those subsidies, not any – any serious one…But – but the politi – our leadership doesn’t have an interest in – a leadership that is intent on still stabilizing the financial system doesn’t have an interest in calling attention to the outrages of the financial system.  So I think they – Wall Street got very lucky.

Wall Street did not get very lucky.  Wall Street basically has a friend in the White House and tons of people in the Treasury Department.   The Tea Party was distracted by the Health Care Bill.  The kleptocracy is still at it.  Listen to the interview, it’s an earful! Many of us think that were going to get a repeat of the global financial crisis some time soon.  Lewis and I aren’t alone on that thought.

One of the things that’s really making me mad about the current conversation on budget cuts and higher education is the public’s ignorance on just exactly how many states have disabled tenure these days.  Tenure has long been a pet peeve of right wing ideologues who feel that every one should be terminated like they are in the private sector.  Basically, the private sector thrives on political firings and uses payroll cuts as the first line of defense when the bottom line is failing because of their bad, short-sighted, and overly-political decisions.

Here’s a list of states decimating tenure as we speak from articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  You know, I’m really sorry that people have to work for private corporations and that their lives are subject to the whims of really mean people, but it’s really no excuse to take it out on those of us that have tried to carve a better way to exist. Take my word for it.  Get yourself a union and they won’t be able to take advantage of you with out taking on a a million other people who have your back!   Those of us in the public sector are willing to forego short term salary highs for long term job security.  It’s evident that a new crop of governors want every one as miserable as employees in the private sector now.  If they intend to do this to us, then I want those seven to eight digits salaries I’d be paid for the 3-5 year short brutal career on Wall Street as a PhD in Financial Economics. I even added a few old links to show you that this is nothing new.   Believe me, tenure isn’t what most people outside of academic think it is …

From Louisiana (this week):

The University of Louisiana system’s Board of Supervisors on Friday voted to approve new rules that will allow its institutions to more quickly dismiss faculty members, even those with tenure, whose programs have been closed.

At a time when the state’s financial climate makes it difficult for campuses to determine their budgets from year to year, that kind of flexibility is key, system officials said. But professors at the board meeting, including representatives of each of the system’s eight campuses, told the supervisors that such a move would erode the protection tenure provides and could ultimately make the system’s institutions unattractive to job seekers and lead current faculty members to leave.

From Nebraska (2oo3):

The University of Nebraska at Lincoln is seeking to eliminate the jobs of 15 tenured faculty members as part of its latest round of budget cuts.

The proposed dismissals, which Chancellor Harvey Perlman announced this month, would save Nebraska about $2.7-million. They are part of a plan to reduce the university’s budget by $26-million, or 12 percent, in the wake of substantial state budget cuts. The new cuts come on the heels of layoffs, proposed in March, that would affect 55 faculty

From Florida (last November) where the attempt to layoff tenured faculty was blocked by an arbitrator.  Notice the decision protected the union faculty but not the nonunion faculty.

An independent arbitrator on Friday ordered Florida State University to rescind layoff notices to several tenured faculty members and slammed how administrators there had decided which jobs would be cut.

In a major victory for the state’s faculty union, Stanley H. Sergent, a Sarasota-based lawyer picked by the university and the union to arbitrate the dispute, held that the university had failed to clearly justify its choices to eliminate certain positions, and had violated a provision of its faculty contract calling for it to try to protect the jobs of those faculty members who had continuously worked there the longest.

In his 83-page decision, Mr. Sergent wrote that the only reason the university had declared certain departments “suspended” was “to allow the effective layoff of all faculty and the selective recall of certain faculty,” apparently for the sake of creating a subterfuge to avoid having to comply with a contractual requirement that it lay off tenured faculty members last. Mr. Sergent characterized the reasoning used by a dean in eliminating one faculty member’s job as “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”

The arbitrator’s decision applies only to 12 tenured faculty members who belong to the campus chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, and does not cover nine other tenured faculty members who do not belong to the union and also received notices of pending layoffs last year.

From Washington State (May2009):

Community colleges in Washington State could soon be able to lay off tenured faculty members much faster than normal, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

At its regularly scheduled meeting next month, the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges will decide whether to declare a financial emergency — a move allowed by a state law passed in 1981 to deal with budget crunches. Such an emergency would speed up the process for laying off tenured faculty members in that they would get only 60 days’ notice of layoffs and the grounds on which they could appeal the decision would be limited, the Post-Intelligencer reported.

I would also like to take this space to mention that I no longer have access to Social Security and that my state pension and the matches that I get from the State basically are what the private sector donates to social security on the behalf of private sector workers.  Many states have pension plans that replace Social Security.  Therefore, I’m personally not getting any thing ‘special’ from taxpayers.  Also, when the defined benefit plan showed up short this year, they decreased the contributions to my optional retirement plan and the others who selected that option to make up the shortfall in the defined benefit pool. Wall Street stole my appreciation and then the state took more from me to pay for their problems in other folks’ annuities.  Other state employees–like me–paid for that shortfall.  It came from our compensation.  I’ve just about had it up to here with reading a bunch of grumbly idiots on other blogs that have no idea how state employee pensions are managed and funded.  If you want to go after high paying state employees that are worthless, try taking it out on the university football coaches and the damned governor’s staff for a change.  It’s not us little guys!

Anyway, it’s Monday morning and I’m a curmudgeon today.  Think I’ll spend the day with the TV off and I’ll stay here on Sky Dancing with the sane people!  Now, where’s my coffee?

What’s on your reading and blogging list?

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